After a long period of complicit indifference and lethargy, Americans are beginning to demand accountability from their elected representatives and as fundamentalist free-market contradictions continue to pile up, the people will increasingly demand real action, hold their feet to the fire, from our hypocritical representatives (Dennis Kucinich is naturally excluded from this roster of hardcore opportunists). Currently, all branches of the US government, from the president on down, and certainly the US Congress, enjoy “socialized” healthcare paid for by taxpayer money. I don’t see members of Congress complaining about the best care our tax money can buy. The hypocrisy is simply astounding.
If the Democrats continue on their suicidal unprincipled path, they will simply not inspire enough people to come out and vote. The outcome will likely be a victorious Rudy Giuliani (assuming he gets the nod). If you are shaking your head “no way” – see you election day when Rudy Giuliani will stand before America, and ring in another four years of policies nearly identical to the Bush White House. These people only differ in name, and in infinitesimal degrees of hypocrisy, corruption, and arrogance. Faces change alright, but the unelected plutocratic government’s policies remain on course.
Can we trust the redeeming angel?
There is always the possibility that Al Gore will swoop in for the great American popularity contest, but in the end, nothing will change unless we force these so-called leaders to change their policies. We can attempt to change their policies by demonstrating and uniting around core issues such as healthcare, writing elected officials, talking to friends and family about the issues, getting angry, and getting involved, and—most importantly—contemplating extra-electoral actions such as strikes, including vast consumer strikes (I know in a nation like America that sounds totally counterintuitive, if not loony, but we’re talking survival here).
If we fail to act in a decisive way we will reap what the criminal elites have sown – one nation, under god, and indivisible in our crimes against one another and the world. The old maxim of “United We Stand Divided We Fall” is truer than ever. The elite classes who own the lion’s share of this nation’s wealth need to know that our eyes are open this time, and that we won’t be fooled. Let’s get out there and prove it. For starters, just do an Internet search for H.R. 676 and sign up with one of many grass roots organizations supporting universal health care. Or join an organization pushing for the impeachment of Bush/Cheney or a group advocating an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. People like Giuliani can go on performing plastic smiles for the camera, but the reality we working people of America live through doesn’t match up to the so called fair and balanced truth we hear on the major news networks.
The working people of America can’t wait for Giuliani to be in power for us to take serious political action. My warning to those listening is that Mayor Giuliani is the true face of Bertram Gross’s “Friendly Fascism”, which amounts to a corporatist culture, in which the state and the corporations are fused, and work together to smother opposition, whether via legal or illegal practices. In the case of a Friendly Fascist government, or a fully matured plutocracy, it is often not necessary to display open force when writing laws inimical to the public.
For those that don’t believe Guliani is a would-be ruler in the same vein as Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, Giuliani’s communications director, Crystine Lategano, notes that Giuliani has more than a passing kinship with one of the most influential rightwing think tanks, the Manhattan Institute. As the Wiki notes, “The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is an influential New York City-based free market think tank established in 1978…The Institute, [is] known for its advocacy of free market-based solutions to policy problems, supports and publicizes research on taxes, welfare, crime, the legal system, urban life, race, education and immigration among others.Their message is communicated through books, articles, interviews, speeches, op-ed’s and through the institute’s quarterly publication City Journal, targeted at policymakers, politicians, scholars and journalists.”
Conservatives like Giuliani are true believers in the dogma of the free-market, as are most Democrats, only the difference lies in the details. The Republicans advocate small government, to police the unruly, uncooperative, and unappreciative “leftist cranks” of America, if we are to adopt Barak Obama’s terminology for the left, but unlike their equally capitalist cousins, the Democrats pander to a broader range of socio-economic demographics. As has been noted elsewhere, they’re the “good cop” in the “bad cop, good cop” routine developed by the elites to fool the unwashed. In keeping with this vision, the Democrats are the channel for the ruling class’ (forced) concessions to the masses, the venting valve to social pressures that might otherwise tear the system asunder.
Consistent with this “kinder face” of the ruling class, the Democrats advocate that government should do more to pick up where the market falls short, although they rarely express discontent with capitalism itself (oops, sorry, “the Free Enterprise System). I suppose the laws of supply and demand are only sacrosanct when we are dealing with household appliances, and not so useful when the market—to continue to present a civilized face—needs the help of socialist programs such as Social Security, Medicare, the public library, public education, roads, and a large number of other municipal services to make society livable. Still, and despite the fact that government programs such as Medicare have been shown to be far more efficient than private setups, the establishment propaganda is unrelenting in badmouthing such options.
Meanwhile, as we continue to cut and underfund worthy programs, and misallocate (if not downright steal) public money, as we have seen in Iraq by the likes of Cheney’s Halliburton, we rarely hear a peep from politicians—including Democrats—or the corporate media about the obscene allocations to killing and destruction in the name of our sacred mythologies. The misnamed “defense budget” (how’s that for Orwellianism) is now inching up to a trillion dollars, and that figure may soon be reached and exceeded if another major “Al-Qaeda” attack materializes.
What we have here then is a continuous slide toward “crony” or “gangster” capitalism, and who better than Giuliani to run gangster capitalism, being that his father was a convicted mafia muscle man that served time in Sing Sing? We certainly don’t wish to blame by association, but it may be true that, more often than not, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Given his longstanding unregenerate opportunism Giuliani’s track record calls for legitimate suspicion.
Let Giuliani win, and 2008 could easily become George Orwell’s 1984 in full blossom. Some people believe that things have to get worse in America before they get better. The question remains how much worse are we willing to let them become before things are beyond repair? Do we need to wait for 100 million people to not have health insurance as opposed to 50? Will it take a war with Iran and possibly Venezuela for us to be fed up with self-righteous “preemptive wars” against countries our leaders cannot prove are a legitimate threat to “our way of life”? Do we need more infringement on our civil liberties by the Patriot Act? (Another truly Orwellian term in itself). Would it require energy corporations to damage the ozone layer further to really heat things up for the public? How much will we stand before we take a stand, and demand the same from our out of touch elected officials? If they cannot serve the needs of the people, than they are no longer any use to the people. The middle classes, who serve as a buffer to the wealthy, are beginning to feel the systemic burn and are starting to wake up in small numbers. However, the public needs to realize that our problems are not a mere question of White House personnel. At bottom, our interests as a nation do not, cannot, and will never coincide with that of the corporate class. It’s a systemic issue. In the words of Martin Luther King, “maybe it’s time we move towards a Democratic Socialism.” If so, maybe Giuliani, should he be the winner in 08, will be the last step toward the implantation of barbarism with a “human face.” Or the final wake-up call to turn the tide.
Paul A. Donovan is Assistant Editor at Cyrano’s Journal (http://www.bestcyrano.org/).
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